2Q2 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



human society? A man, or a school, or a world is 

 the better of hard work. And the world will be kept 

 hard at work ; there is no throwing off the yoke ex- 

 cept for that unhappy minority, the idle classes. 

 Could we destroy social pressure we might find that 

 we had simply destroyed the atmosphere which our 

 souls breathe. 



Yet, if we admit the permanence of struggle, we 

 must strictly cross-examine the theories which are 

 built on that fact, lest they exaggerate it. They have 

 called the process natural selection, in some cases, 

 perhaps, because they were enamoured of struggle, 

 and love-blinded to its dangers ; in some cases, but 

 hardly in all cases. What can be the reason why 

 Darwinism has had so great a charm for many 

 sociologists and moralists ? 



Perhaps the reason was that natural selection stated 

 a method of progress without conscious known super- 

 intendence. Many different forces struggled or com- 

 peted nature selected*; environment selected ; the 

 struggle itself selected. Many different patterns were 

 aimed at ; one pattern resulted, and no one had aimed 

 at it. Such at least is the suggestion underlying 

 Mr. W. H. Mallock's definition of evolution as "the 

 reasonable sequence of the unintended." 1 



1 Aristocracy and Evolution, p. 97. I merely observe how curiously 

 the teleological suggestion recurs, even in a phrase which seems de- 

 signed to exclude teleology. 



Mr. Mallock's interesting book marks an advance, in so far as he 

 insists that progress due to " great men " is more rapid than the physio- 

 logical progress due to natural selection. But he goes on to distin- 

 guish this advance, in the sphere of reason and realm of history, from 

 mere biological evolution, on the ground that in the latter, wholes com- 

 pete, while, in reason and history, parts of the social organism compete 



